Big news… or maybe not. The Church of England is meeting in Synod, and has adopted the following resolution:
That this Synod, aware of the distress caused by recent divisions within the Anglican churches of the United States of America and Canada,
“(a) recognise and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family;
(b) acknowledge that this aspiration, in respect both of relations with the Church of England and membership of the Anglican Communion, raises issues which the relevant authorities of each need to explore further; and
(c) invite the Archbishops to report further to the Synod in 2011.”
At first glance, it appears to be big news: the Church of England “recognizes” the Anglican Church of North America!
On further reading, this isn’t as awesome as it might appear. The Synod voted down a stronger worded resolution the day before, and this resolution says nothing about recognizing the ACNA as an actual province of the Anglican communion. It simply says that it “recognizes” that there are “Anglicans” in the United States and Canada that wish to remain members of the “Anglican family”, which, as someone else said, is a “nearly infinite source of nuance”.
And then there’s the old “explore further” chestnut, which means that in sometime in 2011 a vaguely-worded report may or may not be released that may or may not say anything of consequence by a committee that may or may not have a backbone (given the truly awe-inspiring power of Anglican committees, I’ll let the reader guess what I think the outcome will be. In all likelihood, such a report will, much like the verbal gymnastics of the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, amount to exactly nothing. Dozens of pages of fluff designed to not ruffle the (multicolored) feathers of the Episcopal Church*, while at the same time throwing a meager bone to Orthodox Anglicans in North America… and pleasing no one… especially the 95% of Anglicans in the rest of the world who don’t live in England or North America.
Read more about it here.
* – (multicolored) feathers? Confused? See this:
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